without that terrible bugbear going to service, whereas they
meant to live great, rich and high, and I know not what.

Well, after Mrs. Mayoress was gone, her two daughters came
in, and they called for the gentlewoman too, and they talked
a long while to me, and I answered them in my innocent way;
but always, if they asked me whether I resolved to be a
gentlewoman, I answered Yes. At last one of them asked me
what a gentlewoman was? That puzzled me much; but,
however, I explained myself negatively, that it was one that
did not go to service, to do housework. They were pleased
to be familiar with me, and like my little prattle to them, which,
it seems, was agreeable enough to them, and they gave me
money too.

As for my money, I gave it all to my mistress-nurse, as I called
her, and told her she should have all I got for myself when I
was a gentlewoman, as well as now. By this and some other
of my talk, my old tutoress began to understand me about what
I meant by being a gentlewoman, and that I understood by it
no more than to be able to get my bread by my own work; and
at last she asked me whether it was not so.

I told her, yes, and insisted on it, that to do so was to be a
gentlewoman; 'for,' says I, 'there is such a one,' naming a
woman that mended lace and washed the ladies' laced-heads;
'she,' says I, 'is a gentlewoman, and they call her madam.'

"Poor child,' says my good old nurse, 'you may soon be such
a gentlewoman as that, for she is a person of ill fame, and has